The sun was setting as the woman apparated in, arriving in an alleyway with a suitcase in hand. She'd left everything else at the castle. She would be back there as summer faded into autumn, after all. She didn't want to be here. She didn't want to walk into that house. She didn't want to start packing things up, because as soon as she did, it would all be real again. Part of her wanted to go back to Sussex, to spend the summer in the house she'd inherited. If she was going to be miserable, it would be better being miserable in the gardens Aunt Violet had meticulously built up and enchanted than being miserable here.

Cokeworth hadn't changed a bit. It was largely abandoned, like it had been for decades now. A couple of children were running up the dirty street, racing home in time for dinner, trying to beat the sunset. Two of them, a pair of young twins dressed in ragged clothes, stopped and watched as she approached the house at the end of the road. "Oi, miss, whatcha going in there for? Don't you know that's where the weird man lives?"

"What weird man?" she asked patiently, turning to face them.

"He's only here for the summer. Our brother Archie doesn't think he's real. He wears these weird clothes and sometimes he'll walk out into the street and just disappear," the other one told her. "You know who he is?"

Hazel sighed, not wanting to explain. "Boys, do you know what a Muggle is?"

"A what?"

That was all she needed to know. She raised her wand, saying, "Good. Obliviate." It wasn't strictly legal, but she had been an Auror at one point. They had their own Obliviators, but at the height of the First Wizarding War, they'd all learned to do it themselves. What the boys couldn't remember wouldn't hurt them.

"Sorry miss, what were you asking?"

"I just wanted to know if you boys needed help getting home."

"No, thank you." They scampered off towards the end of the road, disappearing into the mist towards the river.

With a sigh Hazel fished her keys from her pocket, stepping into the old house and locking the door behind herself. She set her suitcase down in the front hall, looking into the sitting room full of books. A sudden sense of loathing overcame her. It wasn't what she expected. She'd expected to want to cry, but right now, she felt more like she was going to be sick. She hated this place. Sev had given it to her, but she wasn't intent on keeping it. They'd had some good memories here, but this was also the place where his dad had hurt him so much, where his mum had died, and where he'd been forced to live with Death Eaters traipsing in and out, using the house as an apparition point.

She walked into the kitchen, setting down a bag of groceries and numbly starting to unpack everything. Not feeling much like eating, she wandered through the house, trying to figure out what to pack up first. It made the most sense to go room by room. Start with the sitting room, pick out the books to keep and the books to donate to the school. Slughorn would want some of them, and she'd keep some for Ghoul Studies and Defense Against the Dark Arts. McGonagall had convinced her to take on some of the Defense classes, since she had a rotating cast of Aurors set up to teach the older students.

In time she would need to pack up the upstairs office that had once been Sev's childhood bedroom. She'd pack up his room last, folding up all of the clothes to be donated and rifling through the handful of memories he'd left behind. She'd already packed up his things at Hogwarts - or rather McGonagall had the House Elves box them up for her to go through. It had been too much, so she left most of them in her chambers at the school. But she couldn't avoid it here.

She couldn't avoid any of it. The gouges in the walls that he'd tried to wallpaper over, the well-worn sofa that had been there since at least their own seventh year, the photos he kept above the fireplace.

When it was finally late enough to go to sleep, she couldn't bring herself to lay down. The bed was still made, as if it was waiting for its owner to return like any other summer. She tried to settle in, tried to close her eyes, but all she could think of was how she wasn't going to be able to roll over and reach out for him any more. At Hogwarts she could at least delude herself into thinking that he was working late, or he'd been called away to deal with a crisis in the Slytherin common room, and he'd crawl into bed with her once she was already asleep. But here it was different. She couldn't make up excuses here.

She sat up, looking to the empty side of the bed. The last time they'd been there, right before they'd taken off for Hogwarts and said goodbye to Wormtail, he'd reached out for her in the middle of the night, telling her once again that he had to do something terrible, that he'd Vowed to do something terrible, but he couldn't tell her what it was. She'd pulled him close, promising she would believe him, Sev kissing her like the world was about to cave in. Their fervid kisses turned into something slow, and thick, and gentle all the same. "Do you want to?" he whispered as he leaned in to kiss her again.

"Yes."

Even there, in the safety of the warded rooms, he took his time. No matter how much he ached to get on with it, Sev would always take his time, making sure every move was deliberate. Especially in the early mornings, if their usual 'good morning' kisses turned into something deeper. It was making love, after all, and though he didn't feel the strong urge to do it often, when he did, he made sure it lived up to its name. So he would move slowly and deliberately, pressing his body to hers as much as he could, wanting to feel every inch of skin between them. He adamantly refused to do anything that might hurt her, even if she asked for it. She understood, though. He hated inflicting pain on the one person he truly cared for. So he was as gentle as possible, which often resulted in the most achingly beautiful "Severus, please" he'd ever heard. The only thing that wasn't gentle was the string of creative words he'd moan into her ear, usually right around the time she was doing the same. But when they were done he would pull her into his arms, both of them taking a moment to breathe before casting all of the usual charms.

With tears welling up in her eyes, Hazel grabbed one of the pillows and went downstairs, thinking she would just sleep on the sofa. But no, as soon as she sat down all she could think of was how they'd fallen asleep there together after his mum's funeral, when he had been left alone in an empty house with nothing but her and the ghosts of what the house used to be. So she got up, opting for the armchair next to the sofa instead.

The crushing emptiness of the house was all she knew. She didn't know it when it was filled with shouting or flying objects. But she knew Sev had grown up here feeling so alone. She curled herself around the pillow, hot tears streaming down her cheeks. Part of her wondered how many times he'd done the same thing in that house. He was so alone, so bitterly alone, even at the end. "The Shrieking Shack," she stammered, "of all places the Shrieking Shack… Sev, I'm sorry. I'm sorry you were always so alone, I'm sorry I couldn't convince you to stay on our side, I'm sorry I couldn't love you enough to convince you to stay, I'm sorry, I'm sorry…" She could hardly breathe, choking on her words. "I love you, Sev. I love you so much and I'm sorry I couldn't ever convince you that you were enough. You're my Half-Blood Prince, my, my other half, my - we were going to get married! We were going to get old together and be that disgustingly happy couple! Damn it, Sev! I never… I never even got to say goodbye."

Yelling into the void of the house helped, but every ounce of her was in pain as she sobbed into the pillow. "You deserved at least one day of being happy… I hope I gave that to you. It'll never be enough to make up for everything… I'll never be enough to fix it, I… I just hope I helped you not be so alone. Sev, I promise I'll always love you."

She'd bottled everything up, only letting the mask slip when she was alone. But being back here, where she knew he'd been in so much pain, but also where they'd spent time together, where they'd lived as just them, it was a different kind of hurt. An all-consuming pain that she could finally allow herself to feel now that she could be alone without having to immediately pretend she wasn't crying afterwards, or having to cast a silencing charm on the Potions storeroom so she could scream into it, or having to act like she was strong enough to withstand all of the acidic things people said about him. They painted him as a monster, even after Harry had tried to convince the public that he was good all along.

He wasn't perfect, but he was Sev. He was the boy who would help her practice Charms, who would send owls across the castle to her when he had nightmares, who slept on the Ravenclaw sofa on full moons, who would let her paint his nails while they lay out under their favorite tree, who nervously asked her to the ball. And the man who cautiously reached out for her and brought her back into his life when she'd come back to the school, the man who left her flowers every Friday and kissed her good morning and goodnight, who woke her up from the horrid nightmares of her days as an Auror, who loved her so much that he'd sacrificed everything to keep her safe. Her favorite person, her Half-Blood Prince, the love of her life. He may not have been perfect, but he was Sev, and she loved him for it. Not even Rita Skeeter's most well-written and persuasive articles could convince her otherwise.